


Good vs Evil

by Nebulad



Series: Whiskey Molotov [19]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Origin Story, hancock pov, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 11:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7221376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His body swung heavily and Hancock opened his mouth. <i>“Of the people, for the people,”</i> he spat out with hardly any air in his lungs to say it. Adrenaline pumped through him, piloting him in lieu of brainpower.</p><p>“Who the fuck are you?” one guy asked, and Hancock checked the urge to shove a gun in his face. That was the easy way and he hadn’t gone out in the ruins with Fahrenheit and her team because he wanted to sit his ass squarely on the easy way.</p><p>“Your new fucking mayor,” he declared. “And we’re gunna change some shit up."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Hancock hadn’t had a bad childhood. His brother was fucking insufferable but it was his general understanding that all brothers were; his ma was a bit frayed around the edges, worried too much, but he figured every mother outside of the inner confines of Diamond City did; and pop was same as most, tired and vigilant and a little rougher around the edges than he wanted to be.

He’d started to do drugs because he got hit with an existential horror that seemed to miss everyone else entirely. What it all meant, what it was all for, the very concept of time was enough to drive him to Jet just to slow it all down and give himself more hours in the day. He met more exciting people, went more exciting places— fuck if Goodneighbor didn’t beat the shit of the rotted wood marina any goddamn day, and it didn’t have his dumbass brother sticking his nose into everything.

Ma worried. Pop ranted. John kept going, because they couldn’t do anything but kick him out and ma would never let it happen. Even if she did, he had options. He was handy with a shotgun and he put people at ease— ma’s handsome boy had a smile that lit up the room he was standing in, a sharp contrast to his brother’s twisted frown (dead ringer for pop on the worst days). He could deal, he could drift— whatever. He wasn’t worried about it, not with a pocketful of Mentats and a flask of whiskey hidden in his jeans, and a smile that made sure ma didn’t ask questions.

John wasn’t really concerned with great big philosophical morality. He didn’t know shit about good and bad, and he didn’t fucking care. The ‘Wealth was a real special place where good and bad were judged on who won, and even if it pissed him off that there were assholes that got free rides they didn’t deserve, what the fuck could he do about it? If people were shits, they got a fucking bullet in the brain for pissing people off and that was how the wasteland worked, good or evil.

What he did know was when something smelled wrong and when shit was about to be _bad._ When his brother announced that he was gunna be mayor of Diamond City and move them all into the stands— they’d abandoned the marina since then, but their place was squat and low to the ground and too close to the edges of the Wall to be safe— John thought it smelled bad. His brother was many things, but _social_ and _likeable_ weren’t it. Seemed like some pretty fucking important things for a mayor to be if anyone asked him, but no one did.

When he saw the first anti-Ghoul poster, and saw a Ghoul couple standing in front of it stricken dumb with horror, he knew what came next was gunna be _bad._ He confronted the pompous fuck immediately, shouting so fucking loud pop told him to go cool his head before opening his yap. The tit had very calmly responded that it was for the best and didn’t John know that one of them had gone feral recently? They were _dangerous_ and he was just giving the voters what they wanted.

John stayed away from home longer, and away from Goodneighbor too. There were too many Ghouls there and it made his guts hurt to look at them and think of the people back in Diamond City that he wasn’t doing shit for. He didn’t wanna fight with his brother no matter how much the dick deserved a punch— it’d upset ma, which’s piss off pop, and it was just too much so he fucked off.

The next time he was in Diamond City proper it was to fucking _beg._ The citizens were wild eyed and shouting, dragging people out of their homes and shoving them towards the ruins. Security had their guns pointed at the wrong fucking people, threatening the Ghouls that if they so much as twitched the wrong way they were gunna get a face full of lead. John went up to the mayor’s office, but his brother wasn’t even there— a really fucking good replica, but McDonough was so many things and John still didn’t think _evil_ was one of them. The guy in front of him was evil, looking down on the chaos and destruction and bloodshed and had the fucking nerve to turn to John and say _it’s finally mine._

He was fucking welcome to it.

John led the shivering refugees through the ruins, his shotgun prepped and ready to kill anything with the balls to get in his way right then. The people were scared, and then even more so when they found out he was leading them to Goodneighbor, but there was nowhere else. Unless they all decided to magic up a farm to live on, there was Diamond City, Goodneighbor, or a maze of ruins filled with mutants and Raiders. Maybe the mutants would leave the Ghouls alone, but the Raiders sure as shit wouldn’t; and if by some miracle they made their way without getting turned inside out, they still needed food and water.

There was nowhere else, and even though he did his best to make them comfortable, they were Diamond City folk and the slime that ran the town was barely as good as a Raider. _Vic_ and his goons could smell the soft city life on the refugees and one day John had a pack full of food for them but there was no one left. They were just… gone. The best he could do was hope that they at least left on their own and weren’t scared away by some fucking meathead working on Vic’s orders.

He tried to pretend like nothing had happened, but everyone knew. He had the stink of sentimentality on him and it wasn’t doing him any good to mope about the fate of the strangers he hadn’t done shit to save from his asshole brother. Goodneighbor used that kind of weakness as a seasoning when it ate you alive, so for all the world he tried to pretend like he didn’t wake up in a sweat wondering what’d happened to those people, or fucking anyone else.

He stood real still when Vic’s cronies cracked that fucking drifter open like a can of Cram on the sidewalk. He was caught between _don’t fucking look_ and _don’t fucking blink_ because his stomach was sick as the guy whimpered in pain and had his ribs bashed to bone shards, but Vic already had him pegged as soft. Next day it’d be him on the pavement, looking at the crowd with big bloodshot eyes and begging for someone to step the fuck in.

 _Fuck Vic,_ he thought viciously as the guy finally died. _Fuck Vic and his cronies fuck them fuck them fuck them and fuck me for standing here like a dick._ It was all he was fucking good for, standing around like an asshole and letting people get hurt. He didn’t know shit about morality and what made something good and what made it bad, but he could fucking tell when someone was a pale fucking coward and _he_ was a pale fucking coward who let bad things happen because he was too chickenshit afraid.

He went to Fred to ask for something to fuck him up. Fred asked for details but the only detail John cared about was fucking himself up so hard…. he didn’t know. Maybe fucking himself up so hard he died. At that point he didn’t care, and ignored Clair’s shrill scolding when Fred handed him something that glowed. “One hit,” Fred told him in that dreamy voice. “That’s all there is in the whole wide world. Costs an arm and a leg but you’d be the only one to taste her.”

John happened to have an arm and a leg handy, and tossed Fred the caps. It glowed and it made his stomach sick and his skin itch just to be around. “This shit gunna kill me?” he asked, not sure if he’d abstain if the answer was _yes._

“Nah, but it’ll Ghoul you. There was a whole bundle of Old World reports where I found it, said some old gangster used it to become the first Ghoul _ever.”_ Fred had all the awe in the world in his voice but in all fairness, he sounded the same when he got to talking about Salisbury Steak with Psycho injected into it. He was a weird fucking guy. “Wanted to trip through the ghoulification.”

John left with it. No more John McDonough, no more ma’s handsome boy, no more looking into windows and seeing that dumb asshole that wouldn’t lift a finger to help a guy getting beat to death in the streets because he was afraid, who let a bunch of innocent people die because he didn’t wanna upset his mom by yelling in the house.

He laughed for half an hour when he lost his nose, and that’s about all he could remember for the next week. When he came to there was a merc named Fahrenheit hovering over him with Daisy from the discount store. “Told you he’d live.” Fahr’d been the one to find him tripping out and rotting in the streets, and she was never one to just let a guy suffer if he didn’t deserve it. She could see he was ghouling up fast, though, so she’d gone to get Daisy.

“Dumb kid,” the merchant said, shaking her head real slow and getting up. She left without another word, seeming confident that whatever effects he was gunna suffer were long through.

“Where are we?” It was fairly dark and his eyes were… fucked up. He probably didn’t have pop’s stark blue eyes anymore, and he knew without looking that he’d only kept wisps of ma’s blonde hair.

“The Old State House.” She didn’t look real pleased about it, but it was where she’d been sleeping and Daisy hadn’t wanted John rotting all over her back room. “Vic doesn’t know we’re here— one of the guards owed me a favour.”

“Fuck Vic,” he said automatically, his head turning aggressively. He felt like a pouty kid, but also like a fucking piece of meat that’d gotten run over by a tank about six hundred times. He looked towards the dim light in the room, a lamp sitting next to an old museum display.

It was John Hancock’s outfit. He remembered his lessons, distantly— whatever burnt up textbook they’d been squinting over had said that Hancock was a troublemaker, and the first guy to sign the big _fuck you_ freedom document in the revolution. They shared a name and John’d always liked that even if he’d never say so. That was a legacy a guy could be fucking proud of.

“I’ve got an idea,” he said, getting to his feet shakily (god he was a fucking mess but he wasn’t gunna fucking think about it right then because he only had so much brainpower and it was all getting soaked up by this revolution that was thrumming in his gut).

“I think I’m going to like it,” Fahrenheit responded with a drawling smile as he grabbed the lamp and smashed it into the display case. The jacket was sunbleached and dirty and the vest was threadbare and sloppy but fuck it. Whatever. That wasn’t the important part. “You got a name, drifter?”

“Hancock,” he said, and that was it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maybe some day mr talent will rub his tentacles on my art but for today we have this which was my first attempt at the McDonough family with some bonus Audrey because yall know I have tackled this from every fucking angle imaginable. I'm trying to write something #fresh I really am. [Here's my writing blog as proof.](http://nebulaad.tumblr.com)


	2. Chapter 2

His blood thrummed when Vic swung and the fucker deserved it and all his fucking goons deserved it and Hancock didn’t know shit about morality and what was bad and what was good but he knew Vic and his army of assholes _fucking deserved it._ He stared out over a sea of wary looking civilians, all looking up— they weren’t upset. No one was really upset about the development and there’d been zero collateral in his coup, but they all waited like they wanted him to talk anyway.

He stood there, frozen for a second with only the sound of his gasping breath echoing over the courtyard. There was Daisy, looking fairly indifferent if not a little amused; Kleo with no expression and her usual loose posture; Irma and Amari, who’d rushed into the streets to see what was going on…

 _That_ was why he’d done this. For them. Fuck the drifters who were already meat on the ground and fuck him and his fear; Vic had deserved it, but more than that, these people deserved better than that asshole. His body swung heavily and Hancock opened his mouth. _“Of the people, for the people,”_ he spat out with hardly any air in his lungs to say it. Adrenaline pumped through him, piloting him in lieu of brainpower.

“Who the fuck are you?” one guy asked, and Hancock checked the urge to shove a gun in his face. That was the easy way and he hadn’t gone out in the ruins with Fahrenheit and her team because he wanted to sit his ass squarely on the easy way.

“Your new fucking mayor,” he declared. “And we’re gunna change some shit up. Starting right here and right fucking now, no more of Vic’s dickbrain army going on tears.”

“Who’s gunna protect the town?” That was Daisy, with a very valid question.

“We’re gunna assemble ourselves a neighbourhood watch,” he said. That part had been planned in the ruins. “Goodneighbor’s getting a fucking makeover and it’s gunna look a lot fucking different when I’m done.”

It really did, and Hancock sat back on the couch he’d dragged into Vic’s kitchen, inhaled a puffer full of Jet, and said that it was good. Across the room, Fahrenheit rolled her eyes but there was a smile playing on her mouth. She agreed, he figured, just too cautious to say so.

. . . . .

Life was good— rough, but good. Hancock had eyes all over town and hardly needed them because the people liked getting to go their fucking way without checking over their shoulder for Vic’s boys. They were, for the most part, willing to allow outsiders to come and go as they pleased so long as Hancock didn’t have his hands in any of their vices. He went outside and did his speeches and after a while, he saw them start to believe it.

_What’s the best town in the Commonwealth?_

_Goodneighbor._

He admitted to himself that the outsider rule was in memory of the refugees, who might have survived the town’s unique lifestyle if it hadn’t been for the constant fear and extortion that Hancock had barely kept at bay. His rules had saved several lives, and he figured it’d never be enough but it was something and it was all he could think of to do.

Life was rough and good and routine, and he hated himself a little less for making the town respectable again. It was a small thing in the grand scheme of shit he’d fucked up, but Goodneighbor was something he was willing to burn his name into for eternity. He had an eternity, after all.

It seemed like no time at all when Audrey staggered into town, though it must have been _years._ She was the picturesque outsider— she was wearing a vault suit for fuck sakes, had all her teeth and her hair was fairly clean. How she’d even _made it_ to Goodneighbor was beyond him, unless somehow Skinny Malone had missed someone on his rampage through the vault near the Commons, but either way she was practically begging to get robbed.

Lucky her, Finn started nice. Hancock and Fahrenheit were chatting in front of the Old State and he was getting distracted by the con’s voice. When he finally turned to see what was bugging him so much, he saw a pretty vault kid and one of those Mr. Handy robots getting shaken down by a slime whose only redeeming quality was his penchant for headshots when the supermutants knocked on Goodneighbor’s door.

Finn hadn’t been around for Vic’s reign of terror and didn’t have the same respect for Hancock’s methods as everyone else did. The mayor walked over, resolved to either talk the guy down or fill the fucker with stab wounds ‘til he fucking learned— he really hoped he could chat it out, though, because the mutants had been lingering around the door lately.

He wasn’t so lucky (no big loss) but then he was facing down the vaultie who was staring at him like he was gunna turn on her next. “You all right?” he asked, and her expression went soft. He must’ve been the first one to ask her that since she crawled out of whatever hole she’d been in.

“I’m… you killed him.” She didn’t sound that afraid— breathless, maybe. God it must have been fucked up for her to be out of the vault, and he almost felt like recommending that she go back to where she came from, provided it wasn’t the place Skinny had taken. There were other vaults, he figured, that had to still have people in them. Maybe a different place would take her in.

“Sharp eyes. You’ll fit right in here,” he said, trying to keep the pity out of his voice. If she wanted Goodneighbor then she was welcome to stay, too. Something about the place drew her in, even after she ran out of stuff to ask Hancock and wandered off on her own towards the Memory Den (Irma reported that she’d been talked into letting the kid- he learned her name then, Audrey- into a memory pod and it hadn’t ended well).

She was in and out of the town. She left for a while, long enough to pick up some hand-to-hand berserker from the Combat Zone, coming back with a new haircut and a small stick n’ poke under her big green eyes. She did some work for Rufus, then took Hancock’s job through Charlie, and every time she came back she looked less and less afraid. He sent her out to scout Pickman’s Gallery and she came back with a knife on her thigh and a grin on her mouth. “You will not fucking _believe_ what was going on there,” she said, the boldest thing she’d _ever_ said to him. She usually opted for awkward shifting and big wide smiles at the opposite side of the room so she could avoid eye contact.

If she wasn’t careful he was gunna stop being so worried about her getting used to the wastes.

When he found out she was working for Bobbi, that complicated things a bit. He liked her, he really did, but he couldn’t tolerate theft (especially from Bobbi fucking No-Nose). He had to maintain a delicate balance of mercy and iron will otherwise it’d all come crashing down. He was surrounded by sharks and if even one of them smelled blood then it was over. There was always someone who had to fuck shit up just for the sake of shit being fucked up, who didn’t like it all peaceable the way he kept it.

Fahrenheit volunteered to handle it and she knew the rules— mercy first, asskicking as a last resort. When she returned from confronting the trio in the subway, she gave him the story: Audrey hadn’t known it was his stash and neither had the wiry ginger that Bobbi hired. Audrey’d told Bobbi to just give it up and leave with their lives but the old Ghoul had it in for Hancock for some fucking reason, and started a shootout. The kid stabbed her and was on her way back to the Old State. “Thought you’d like to thank her in person,” Fahrenheit said glibly.

She knew what he wanted as he sat heavily back down on his couch, cringing. Fahrenheit knew exactly what he was thinking, what he’d just made the vault kid do for him. Fuck, was he any better than Vic? Sure he hadn’t shaken her down when she walked through the gates but he’d tried her by goddamn fire— Bobbi hadn’t been so bad. A fucking troublemaker but who wasn’t? It was the entire goddamn point of the town, and hell go back a few years and it might’ve been him hitting some big important asshole’s stash. But it was _his_ stash and _he’d_ decided that Bobbi had to go, and worse yet he’d sent Fahrenheit instead of going himself.

“Fuck,” he said to the wall, and his LT nodded.

“Heard her partner is getting road weary— got herself clean and wants to settle down a while. Maybe if you ask nice, she’ll give you a break,” she suggested, not looking up from the old library book that’d been stashed in one of the floorboards. He wasn’t even sure if she knew how to read, but it really helped her seem casual and disinterested.

Hancock didn’t have to wait long for Audrey to show up, and the first words out of her mouth were an apology. That stung a bit because _when_ had he given her the impression that he was such a hardass? True, he didn’t really try to fix up his unpredictable and violent reputation, but it wasn’t like he was fucking feral.

She agreed real quick to his request to tag along, and when he asked her where they were headed she seemed a little off. “Diamond City,” she said, and he stopped dead in his tracks. He hadn’t even reached the gate yet.

“Ghouls ain’t welcome there,” he told her.

“I’ll talk to Danny,” she said with a shrug. She was fucking confident, he had to give her that one. It almost didn’t seem worth it to follow her all the way to the Green Jewel when he was just gunna get turned away at the door, but he did and lucky him— she seemed a lot more confident outside of Goodneighbor. She charmed the socks right off of Danny Sullivan, insisting that Hancock was helping her carry a load of supplies and that she was just gunna turn back to Bunker Hill if they insisted she take two trips to sell it all off.

The place looked different— sort of emptier than it’d been before. All the houses like the one his family’d owned, the squat shanties by the very seams of the wall, were gone. Weirdly enough there was nothing to replace them either— now there were the market houses and the upper stands. He wondered what’d happened to all the families like his— fuck, or specifically his goddamn parents. Was ma sitting in the Stands with all that luxury making it real easy to forget ol’ Johnny?

“Hancock?” Audrey was looking over at him, her head cocked to the side.

“S’nothin’,” he said with a shrug. “You want me to haul some shit for caps?”

“Sure. Take the chems; you know what they’re worth.” She handed him a carefully made wooden kit filled with a respectable amount of drugs. “Uh, keep what you want too I guess,” she added as an afterthought, and fuck she was gunna kill him if she kept being that clueless. She’d probably never touched so much as a Mentat in her life.

He kept most of the Jet and a pack of Mentats, resolving himself to ask her later if she wanted to try something. It was gunna be a long road with someone who didn’t even know what half this shit did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> logical chapter breaks are for huge nerds so we're just gunna slide on through here


	3. Chapter 3

Audrey was _good._ She was a good shot, a good person, good-looking… after months of trailing along behind her and feeling the sun bake his already roasted skin and all that fresh air clear the cobwebs out of his chest, he thought maybe he was getting a bit attached. He hadn’t expected anything from her; decent enough shot to survive since she’d lasted as long as she did, and maybe a real talent for crouching low and keeping out of sight.

She admitted that she wasn’t real fond of guns before… well, before (he knew a whole lot about keeping an origin story close to the chest, so he didn’t begrudge her any dancing around). “I was actually trying to get them out of public circulation,” she told him, laying on her back and staring at the night sky.

“How?” Hancock asked with a frown. He pictured her with a fucking basket, walking up to a Raider camp pleasant as you please and asking them to hand over their weapons.

“It was different before,” she said, but didn’t seem to want to explain any more.

“You’re all right with a gun, anyway,” he said with a shrug.

“Careful, you’ll make me blush.” He rasped out a laugh that even after ten years sounded wrong to his ears, at her offended tone.

“Better with a knife,” he offered, which was true. Close combat she was something else— too fast to keep any real track of, and fucking ferocious even without chems to get the adrenaline flowing. He wouldn’t call whatever she did _graceful_ , but brutal, and every time she moved he could tell that somewhere in there there was justice.

He had a crush, and he was big enough to admit it. He regretted that he’d met her after ghouling himself, because it’d always been real easy to hook up when he was John McDonough. John Hancock didn’t have a hard time, per say, but the pickings were slimmer and the rejections stung a bit more than they had when he was smooth.

Audrey would have liked him when he was human— well, someone like her would have hated the chickenshit dick he’d been, but _damn_ he’d been easy on the eyes. Shame now that he had something to be proud of he looked like a withered stick of brahmin meat. Still, for a smoothskin she was real up close and personal with him. She didn’t yank her hand away to avoid contact with his, and she didn’t seem unnerved by his fucked up eyes. She’d shove him all playful and grab his hand to yank him back before he set off a trap, just like any human would do for another. He was damn grateful for the consideration.

They traded stories on the road just like regular pals. He gave her memories of ma and pop in exchange for snippets of stories about her dead husband; the marina where he’d grown up for stories of a great big waterfall all the way up north; and then getting ghouled for a mumbled description of her baby. “Not sure I was ready to be a mom. We had him through a surrogate because I’m fucking… I was too scared to carry him myself but I _wanted_ him, you know? Then I got him and I was just _terrified_ and…” she trailed off with a shrug, her eyes darting up to see if he was still listening.

“Sounds rough,” he said, trying to encourage her to continue. She smiled waveringly.

“No shit. Not gunna let whoever has him now hang onto him, though.” And he resolved himself to help her with that because the alternative was going back to Goodneighbor and he loved the place, but it wasn’t as pretty as the road.

. . . . .

The crush festered all sweet inside of him, with every secret smile and shared bedroll cracking him open like a skull on rocks. He figured he couldn’t do nothing but look so he let himself look and wonder at how wild he was about her. It reached a breaking point outside of Concord, when they ran into a group of drifters aiming guns at each other. One of the drifters was a synth, one was a human who was real pissed off about it, and one was a human who wanted everyone to put their guns down and just go their separate ways.

Audrey jumped to the synth’s defense and didn’t even draw her knife. “If he wanted to kill you, he would have by now,” she said, her voice unwavering and flat.

“What if he’s replacing someone?” the drifter with the gun demanded.

“The fuck do you care?” she snapped in return. “You don’t know this guy from anyone else in the Commonwealth so tell me what exact fucking investment you have on this theoretical human’s life? Just let the guy walk away and forget he was even with you.” The guy lowered his gun and synth scrambled away after thanking Audrey in a voice that shook so badly he could barely get the words out, and everyone walked away.

No one got hurt. They didn’t have to hurt anyone and no one hurt each other. It filled Hancock up to the brim with this intensity he didn’t really understand, but he had to tell her— something, anything. They play flirted and when it was cold she shared blankets with him and he’d told her more shit about himself than he’d told _anybody…_

“You’ve been one hell of a friend,” he’d finished, after running his mouth on and on about her and Goodneighbor and his family and getting ghouled and every other goddamn thing. It seemed a sorta empty thing to land on but it was what it was. He wished he could convey how much it meant to him to _have_ a friend without going on for fucking ever.

“You ever thought about us in a… not-strictly platonic sort of way?” she asked. She only got all jumbled like that when she was nervous, but he… didn’t really get what she meant.

“What like, did I have a plan to kill you? You always have a back-up when you go out with someone but I can tell you what I was gunna do if it’ll make you feel better,” he said, sort of uncomfortable. It was weird to finish on _you’re my best friend,_ but even weirder to segway into _this is how I was going to kill you if you fucked with me._

“No,” she snorted. “That isn’t what I meant. Have you ever thought about us but like… a romantic kind of deal?” His heart stopped and it’d been a long fucking time since he got all tied up in front of someone like this.

“That obvious?” He smiled at her, wondering if his grin still worked the same as it had when he was better looking. “Wasn’t gunna say anything; I wouldn’t wish waking up to a mug like this every morning on anyone I cared about.” He wanted to reach out and tease her like he’d been for months— ruffle her hair, squeeze her around the waist, flick her nose when she frowned— and the compulsion was just a wee bit weaker than the one to just say fuck it and see what she’d do if he laid one square on her mouth. He wouldn’t, because he wasn’t some fucking asshole with no respect for her boundaries, but he could daydream a little.

“Fuck that. I like how you look,” she said, looking sort of affronted. “Anyone who says otherwise can take a long walk off a short fucking cliff.”

“S’not about other people, Drey. It’s… me, with the problem,” he said with a shrug. Her face went soft and she reached out real slow to hold his hands. She’d been toughening up her skin since leaving her vault but she was still certified human smooth.

“Well, for what it’s worth to you then, I think you have an amazingly pretty smile. And your eyes are _super_ intense and they crinkle up when you’re happy and… shit, you’re funny and you’re nice and you’re the only person in the entire fucking Commonwealth besides Nick that’s asked me if I’m okay. I’m just… kind of crazy about you,” she said with an aggressively defensive shrug. He wondered if she thought he was turning her down.

“Wouldn’t expect that sort of lapse in judgement from you, but it works out great for me don’t it?” he asked. He wasn’t gunna chase her off if he was what she wanted— it felt weird, and he felt sort of high like he did after hitting some thin Jet, just sort of dazed and loopy, but he was the mayor of weird so he could take it. She looked up at him, then back down, and he could see the grin smack across her face. “Moments like this I know all that karma stuff is bull. No one like me should get this lucky.”

“Hancock,” she scolded, still grinning and still looking down at their boots.

“Looking for something down there?” he teased.

“If I look up are you gunna kiss me?” This had to be a Jet dream or something.

“Not unless you want me to.” He was her first Ghoul. He knew that for absolute certain and he knew he didn’t want to freak her out or make her move too fast because she thought she’d hurt his feelings if she didn’t. _God_ he’d already— this was already so much more than he’d ever expected of her, that she even _thought_ all that nice shit about him even knowing what he’d done.

“I want you to,” she told him, looking up. He took her all in for a second, all the dirt and scars and tattoos and that big smile she couldn’t seem to wipe off her face.

He dip kissed her because he was an unrepentant show-off who’d had a _load_ of practice that he hadn’t been flexing for a while. He felt full fit to bursting when she just wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, and for a second they were just two fucking assholes standing there making out in the middle of the wastelands without any cover to speak of. Hancock didn’t know shit about what made something bad and what made something good, but Audrey was _good_ and kissing was _good_ and for once in his fucking life he just felt good all over.

She pulled away first, a little breathless and playing with the collar of his jacket. “Come on love,” he said, real quiet because he just suddenly remembered that the two human drifters were still hanging out by the fire and just watched that whole thing go down. “Let’s get this freakshow on the road.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I expected this to be longer, probably because I read it through three times before saying "fuck it" and posting it up. [My writing blog is here, anyway,](http://nebulaad.tumblr.com) and there's so much shit there I could not be prouder of the monster I've created. Audrey's got a playlist, so by following the logic Audrey and Hancock have a playlist.


End file.
